News

In collaboration with colleagues at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), Dr. Czarina Behrends (above, right) will assess naloxone distribution patterns, outcomes and required resources in New York City. She will use these data to develop a model for optimal allocation of those resources in order to prevent overdoses. Her project will […]

To address the crisis of opioid misuse, abuse, and overdose, every state but Missouri has implemented a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) that collects data from retail pharmacies on all dispensed controlled substances. PDMPs can help prescribers identify patients who might misuse or divert controlled substances, as well as patients who need substance abuse treatment. […]

The danger of that first prescription “Just in case,” the oral surgeon said, as he prescribed the opioid hydrocodone for my 17-year-old son, who just had his wisdom teeth out. “But you might try Motrin first,” he added. Not knowing what the next hours, or days, would bring, we filled the prescription for 20 pills. […]

Dr. Bulat Idrisov (above, left) is a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) International Program INVEST Drug Abuse Research Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Samet, CHERISH HCV/HIV co-director. Dr. Idrisov completed his medical training in pediatrics and internal medicine in Russia and received a Fulbright Scholarship to complete his Master of Science in […]

It seems self-evident: one way to address the epidemic of opioid deaths is to make prescription opioids harder to misuse. OxyContin, for example, is especially dangerous when it is crushed for ingestion, inhalation, or injection. In 2010, the FDA approved a reformulated, abuse-deterrent version of OxyContin that made the pill difficult to crush or dissolve. […]

Opioids have emerged as one of the greatest public health threats facing the United States. Nationally, fatal overdoses involving opioids have quadrupled since 1999. Opioids contributed to over 33,000 deaths in 2015 alone. In Philadelphia, the numbers are equally sobering. Although the final toxicology reports are pending, approximately 900 deaths in 2016 have been attributed to unintentional drug […]

Public health officials, elected leaders and medical professionals across New York State gathered in Albany, New York on February 7, 2017 to discuss hepatitis C in the state for the first ever New York State hepatitis C virus (HCV) summit. In a consensus statement, the committee that organized the summit called on Governor Andrew Cuomo to […]

What if there was a disease affecting 27.1 million people in the United States, that killed over 33,000 people in one year or about 91 people a day? What if this same disease cost the United States healthcare system about $78.5 billion? What if researchers could not study this disease in order to provide information on the effectiveness or cost of […]

Medicare rang in the new year with four new codes to reimburse primary care teams for behavioral health services. According to an article that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine on February 2, 2017, three of the codes support services using the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) and the fourth allows for services provided under other […]

Pilot grant awardee Dr. Karen Lasser and her team have developed an intervention to screen, link and treat patients with hepatitis C (HCV) in the primary care setting. As the founding medical director for HCV treatment in primary care, Dr. Lasser was motivated to do a budget impact analysis of their intervention to analyze whether the […]

The Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorders, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH) was profiled at the Liver Meeting® 2016 in Boston, MA. The Center’s mission is to develop and disseminate health economic research on healthcare utilization, health outcomes, and health-related behaviors that informs substance use disorder treatment policy and HCV and […]

Last week the Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, released the groundbreaking, comprehensive report Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health. The report comes at a critical juncture, with more than 27 million Americans misusing illicit and prescription drugs, and more than 66 million misusing alcohol. The Surgeon General details the […]